New Project VRC research tests relative impact of Office 2013 against Office versions 2007 and 2010

Madrid – Amsterdam, June 25, 2013 – Today, at TechEd Europe 2013 in Madrid Spain, Project Virtual Reality Check (Project VRC) announced the release of a new white paper about the relative impact of Microsoft Office on the performance of VDI based user environments.

Microsoft Office is the most used application suite in the corporate environment. The goal of this new white paper was to investigate and document the VDI performance impact of Microsoft Office 2013 in comparison to the previous two versions of Microsoft Office, 2007 and 2010.

The comparison of Office 2007 with Office 2010, showed only a 1% performance difference in favour of Office 2007. The comparison of Office 2007 and Office 2013 showed a significant performance decrease of over 20%. This leads to the conclusion that to maintain the same performance levels with the newest version of Microsoft Office, about 20% more infrastructure capacity may be needed.

Office 2013 also consistently uses more CPU and over 272% more memory than Office 2007. In comparison, Office 2010 only uses 26% more memory. Optimizations such as turning animations and hardware graphics acceleration off did not influence the performance in any way.

Another key finding published in the white paper is that running x64 versions of Windows and Office will have substantial impact on Storage IOPS and memory footprint in comparison to x86 versions.

Jeroen van de Kamp, CTO of Login Consultants: “Many organizations are considering upgrading to Office 2013. To help them to make the correct decisions in the upgrade process, we wanted to provide independent insight in the VDI performance impact of this new Microsoft Office version.”

Ruben Spruijt, CTO of PQR: “The goal of project VRC is to provide objective test data that will benefit the VDI and Server-Based Computing industry and end-user organisations. We recognise that every production environment is different. We therefore highly recommend to test the performance impact of Office 2013 in your own environment, before deployment.”

Project ‘Virtual Reality Check’ (Project VRC) was started in 2009 by SBC and VDI specialists PQR (www.pqr.com) and Login Consultants (www.loginconsultants.com) and focuses on independent research in the desktop virtualization market. Several white papers were published about the performance of different hypervisors, application virtualization solutions, Windows Operating Systems and antivirus solutions.

All Project VRC tests are performed with Login VSI (www.loginvsi.com). This vendor independent tool simulates realistic user workloads to objectively test the performance and scalability of VDI and Server Based Computing environments. The full test methodology used is described in the white paper.

This and all other Project VRC white papers can be downloaded for free at www.projectvrc.com. To keep up-to-date with the latest developments you can follow Project VRC on Twitter @ProjectVRC.

About PQR
PQR is the specialist for professional IT infrastructures with focus on safe and manageable availability of data, applications and workstations with optimal user experience. PQR provides its customers with innovative IT solutions that ensure optimal application availability and manageability, without complex processes. Simplicity in IT, that’s what PQR stands for.

PQR was founded in 1990, is located in De Meern, The Netherlands, and has over 100 employees. In the fiscal year 2011/2012, PQR achieved a turnover of € 94.9 million and a net profit after tax of € 4.6 million.

About Login Consultants
Login Consultants is an independent international IT service provider specialized in End User Computing. We help our clients in finding the optimal balance between IT control and end user flexibility. Our goal is an innovative and unique solution, which simplifies future change. Our success with our customers is built on the quality of integration combined with a smart migration approach and the manageability of the solution after deployment.

Login Consultants has an experienced team with over 150 specialists in The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Our consultants have accreditations from Microsoft, Citrix and VMware, and are regularly invited to speak at national and international events. They are involved as experts in online and printed IT publications and actively participate in relevant technical blogs.

The design of this new release has been driven by extensive customer feedback programs, and production testing projects executed at multiple customer and vendor sites, including the tests done for the acclaimed independent research project Virtual Reality Check. Login VSI 4.0 makes testing of VDI and SBC environments easier and more realistic than ever before.

Improved ease of installation
The test image footprint of Login VSI has been reduced by almost 90%. This makes the tool not only easier to install, but also easier to integrate and deploy. Centralization of management, updates and logging makes the use of Login VSI more efficient than ever. Direct Desktop Launch (DDL) mode enables large-scale testing with minimal infrastructure.

Improved ease of test creation
The new intuitive and workflow oriented user interface of Login VSI 4.0 offers step-by-step test creation and wizard based test configuration for all important brokers and languages. The new workload editor introduces a new meta language which makes the customization of workloads very transparent and efficient. The new benchmarking mode enforces strict testing standards, providing industry standard results that are objective, comparable and repeatable.

Improved test realism
The duration of the standard workloads has been increased from 14 to 48 minutes loops. Also the way in which segments and applications start has been improved to better reflect real world user behaviour. The datasets used in the workloads now offer 1000 different documents per type, more and larger websites, and a video library in every format, all to ensure a real world variety in data usage. The execution of the workloads is improved through the introduction of phasing, allowing for real world production user scenarios.

Improved test insight
The new dashboard offers real-time test feedback, including progress, launched and active sessions, elapsed time and time left of the test in progress. The industry standard index VSImax has been further refined, enriching scalability results (max number of users), with objective baseline performance results (independent of tested load). Automated reporting with out of the box report ready graphs for all used settings, response times, and other data enhances the level, and choice, of information generated by the Login VSI analyzer.

“Login VSI is the industry standard for SBC and VDI testing and benchmarking, as is well demonstrated by the large number of technical papers that are available based on results from our benchmarking tool” says Eric-Jan van Leeuwen, CEO of Login VSI B.V. “The ease of use, and improved realism, of this new release of Login VSI will enable both vendor and end-user organizations to build and protect well performing virtual desktop environments”.

Login VSI 4.0 Pro is now available for all customers on active support and maintenance. Version 4.0 of the free Login VSI Express can be downloaded at www.loginvsi.com/download More information about Login VSI and related services can be found at www.loginvsi.com

About Login VSI
Login Virtual Session Indexer (Login VSI) is a vendor independent benchmarking tool to objectively test and measure the performance and scalability of Virtual Desktop Infrastructures and Server Based Computing environments by simulating unique user workloads. Leading IT-analysts recognize and recommend Login VSI as the de-facto industry standard benchmarking tool for VDI and SBC. Login VSI can be used to test VMware Horizon View, Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services or any other Windows based hosted desktop solution. Login VSI is the standard tool used in all tests that are executed in the internationally acclaimed Project Virtual Reality Check. For more information visit www.loginvsi.com

Amsterdam, 17 January, 2013 – Project Virtual Reality Check (Project VRC) is pleased to announce the release of the long awaited ‘Phase V’ white paper which provides independent insights in the impact and best practices of various antivirus (AV) solutions on VDI performance.

The R&D project ‘Virtual Reality Check’ (VRC) was started in early 2009 by the Dutch IT companies PQR (www.pqr.com) and Login Consultants (www.loginconsultants.com) and focuses on research in the desktop virtualization market. Several white papers were published about the performance and best practices of different hypervisors, application virtualization solutions and Windows Operating Systems in server hosted desktop solutions.

This new white paper contains the test results of the VDI performance impact of the antivirus solutions from three leading vendors: McAfee, Microsoft and Symantec.

“When VDI is implemented into production, performance is often a serious issue. A performance impact of up to 40 percent is not unusual after antivirus is installed.” said Jeroen van de Kamp, CTO of Login Consultants “While this aspect has been less of an issue with PC’s or laptops, with performance sensitive environments like VDI it means you need to invest in servers and storage. This was the reason for us to investigate, and provide objective data about, the exact impact of antivirus on VDI”.

“It is important to highlight the fact that Project VRC does not evaluate the quality of the security features of the different AV products, but only provides information about the impact these solutions have on VDI performance” said Ruben Spruijt, CTO of PQR “By testing and comparing different solutions and configurations we discovered the best practice to perform a pre-scan of the master image before it’s deployed. The effect is huge and therefore highly recommended”.

Another key finding published in the white paper is that antivirus off-loading architectures makes a big difference from a storage IO point of view, but not always from a session density point of view.

All Project VRC tests are performed with Login VSI (www.loginvsi.com), the industry standard benchmarking tool for VDI. This software tool simulates typical user workloads to objectively test the performance of VDI and Server Based Computing environments. The full test methodology is described in the white paper.

This and all other Project VRC white papers can be downloaded for free at www.projectvrc.com. To keep up-to-date with the latest developments you can follow Project VRC on Twitter @ProjectVRC.

About PQR
PQR is the specialist for professional IT infrastructures with focus on safe and manageable availability of data, applications and workstations with optimal user experience. PQR provides its customers with innovative IT solutions that ensure optimal application availability and manageability, without complex processes. Simplicity in IT, that’s what PQR stands for.

PQR focuses on four main themes:

Data & System Availability

Application & Desktop Delivery

Secure Access & Secure Networking

Advanced IT Infrastructure & Management

PQR was founded in 1990, is located in De Meern, The Netherlands, and has over 100 employees. In the fiscal year 2011/2012, PQR achieved a turnover of € 94.9 million and a net profit after tax of € 4.6 million. For more information visit www.pqr.com

About Login Consultants
Login Consultants is an independent international IT service provider specialized in End User Computing. We help our clients in finding the optimal balance between IT control and end user flexibility. Our goal is an innovative and unique solution, which simplifies future change. Our success with our customers is built on the quality of integration combined with a smart migration approach and the manageability of the solution after deployment.

Login Consultants has an experienced team with over 140 consultants in The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Our consultants have accreditations from Microsoft, Citrix and VMware, and are regularly invited to speak at national and international events. They are involved as experts in online and printed IT publications and actively participate in relevant technical blogs. For more information visit www.loginconsultants.com

About Login VSI
Login Virtual Session Indexer (Login VSI) is a vendor independent benchmarking tool to objectively test and measure the performance and scalability of Virtual Desktop Infrastructures and Server Based Computing environments by simulating unique user workloads. Leading IT-analysts recognize and recommend Login VSI as the de-facto industry standard benchmarking tool for VDI and SBC. Login VSI can be used to test VMware View, Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services or any other Windows based hosted desktop solution. For more information visit www.loginvsi.com

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In addition, my thoughts and opinions change from time to time…I consider this a necessary consequence of having an open mind. This weblog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time snapshot and manifestation of the various memes running around my brain, and as such any thoughts and opinions expressed within out-of-date posts may not the same, nor even similar, to those I may hold today.